Snapshots
by R. Seldon
Summary: A drabble & ficlet collection, mostly Joshua-centric. Latest entry: 'Loyalty'. There are downsides to immortality. Or does waiting at a train station forever -- for someone who's never coming back -- sound like a good time to you? -spoilerish-
1. For Your Troubles

Disclaimer: TWEWY belongs to Square Enix. I'm just borrowing.

A/N: Written for the new twewy weekly100 drabble community on LJ. This week's prompt was "unconventional".

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_For Your Troubles_

It's an unconventional way to say thank you, but after everything that's happened, what else is there? Neku doesn't know it but he needs this, needs to find out where the two of them really stand, or he'll always wonder. One way or another, eventually they'll end up here; best do it now, and then everyone can move on.

Neku learned, during the Game, how much they were alike. Now... he needs to learn how much they're not. And this is the only way Joshua knows how to show him.

"Neku?" And Joshua smiles. "You'd better pick up that gun..."

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A/N: First drabble ever; it feels weird posting something so short, but it wasn't easy limiting this to 100 words. So let me know how it turned out. :)


	2. Irony

A/N: Just realised I had never posted this here. Wrote it a few weeks ago for the twewy ldws (last drabble writer standing) community on LiveJournal (and I've made it to the final round of their first contest -- whee!).  The prompt was "Viva la...".

On another note, this is set sometime pre-game.

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Irony

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_"Viva la vida!"_

Joshua doesn't bother much with cheery sayings, but he smiles at this one. _Long live life._ It's amusing him, mainly because it's printed on a t-shirt worn by a boy who's recently died. Joshua rarely takes much interest in individual Players, but the irony here is too good to miss.

To the boy's credit, he and his partner put up a good fight. _Viva la vida_ -- it's a bright, optimistic battle-cry for both of them all week, as they struggle through a world designed, essentially, to screw them over. They have hopes, dreams, friends to fight for; if there's any justice, they're sure they'll win.

Joshua knows that there isn't, of course, and on the sixth day, the boy and his partner discover this. It's a simple mission -- reach Cat Street -- or it _would _be simple, if not for the towering purple elephant Noise they find blocking their path. And again, Joshua smiles, this time at the looks on their faces.

He doubts he would have returned them to life anyway. He's been thinking lately that it's hardly worth it, that _Shibuya's_ hardly worth it. He's sick of people believing they're entitled to that second chance; maybe next time around, whatever these Players' souls become will better understand just how insignificant they and their wants really are. _Viva la vida_ -- life _will _live long, but that's life on a universal level. On an individual level... not so much.

It's over in an instant. Cheerful mottoes have nothing on a creature that can knock a person flat just by stomping its feet. The partners dissolve into static, one a few seconds after the other, and Joshua laughs softly as a thought occurs to him. On an individual level, he thinks, that about sums it up... now, how would one say it?

Ah, yes. Aloud, he murmurs, _"Viva la muerte."_

_Long live death._

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A/N: As always, any thoughts are welcome.  Also, in case anyone reading this still cares, I swear _Quis Custodiet _has not been abandoned.  Chapter five has hit a few snags, and grad school doesn't give me as much time to work on lengthy writing projects as the summer does, but it's still in the works.  Promise!


	3. Dreaming in Color

Disclaimer: _The World Ends With You_ belongs to Square Enix. I'm just borrowing.

A/N: Another one written for twewy ldws; the prompt was 'marker'.

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_Dreaming in Color_

She comes across the picture while cleaning her room one day, and stops to stare at it for a while.

It's a chaotic jumble of images, childishly drawn in brightly colored markers. The spaceship up in one corner is a startling shade of red. Some sort of blue dragon flies below it, and there's a creature which upon consideration is probably a horse. Nearby, a blonde stick figure rides a skateboard in front of a blocky gray skyline.

A bright green park, full of trees and flowers and swing sets, takes up nearly half the page. It would be a more prosaic scene if not for the elephant ambling through it, another stick figure on its back.

_"Can I ask you something?"_

_"You can always _ask._" He laughs quietly. "I don't promise to answer."_

_She nods; she wouldn't have expected much else from him. "What was my entry fee?"_

It's strange. She can vaguely remember drawing the picture, though she couldn't have been more than five or six at the time. What she can't remember is having all those things, all that vibrant _life,_ in her head.

_He tilts his head to one side, gives her a calm stare. "Don't you know?"_

All those dreams.

She sits down at her desk and searches through the drawers until she finds a blank piece of paper and a handful of felt-tipped pens. Her hand holds a pen to the paper and she stares at it for a while. But there's nothing there. No vast worlds of imagination, no fantastic creatures, nothing she wants to be or do. No... anything.

She lost the Game, after all.

_"Will I ever get them back?"_

_There's mild reproof in his tone. "You know the answer to that, too." _

_And that could mean anything, really._

All right. Maybe... maybe start smaller.

She thinks for a little while, sets the bright colors aside, reaches for a pencil instead. Her brow furrows in studious concentration as she begins to draw.

Some while later she sits back to examine the result. She's not the world's best artist, and the crudely sketched figure would hardly be recognizable if not for the baggy shirt and black cap. But _she _knows it's her. The self-portrait is sitting at her desk, a smile on her face and a line that's supposed to be a pen in her hand. She's busily engaged in drawing a picture, though its details are indistinct in the sketch.

_"Is that all you'll say?"_

_He shrugs. "There's nothing else _to _say."_

And maybe this is what he meant. She doesn't remember how to dream about big things... but if she can dream about remembering _how _to dream, then maybe hope isn't lost.

She tapes the new picture up on the wall by her bed, and the old one next to it. The colored pens and markers go back in her desk drawer; she doesn't need them right now.

But someday, she will.

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A/N: Look at that, I wrote something that... barely had Josh in it at all. He still insisted on making an appearance, though... he does like attention. -_-;;

Comments, good or bad, would be much appreciated!


	4. Loyalty

Disclaimer: _The World Ends With You _belongs to Square Enix; I'm just borrowing.

A/N: Aaand... another from the ldws community, this one from the third round of the competition. The prompt was 'Miss me?'

Have to admit I'm kind of proud of this one -- it won the round, too. :) I'd have liked to flesh it out a bit more, but there was a 500-word limit, and it was just barely under that as it was.

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_Loyalty_

Joshua's never been terribly fond of dogs, and this one has always been a bit of a mystery to him, but he'll concede that it merits some respect. More than many people do, certainly. A lot of animals, when they die, never reach the Underground; this one is an exception. It's been here longer than Joshua has.

And so he stops, crouches down, gives it a brief scratch behind the ears. The dog leans into his hand slightly, but its head never turns, never looks away from the platform where a train will soon arrive.

The previous Composer had something of a soft spot for the creature, and set this area of Shibuya Station off-limits to the Game and the Reapers so that it could have some peace while it waited. Joshua can't help but think that erasure would be kinder, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. That puzzles him-- but he's not obliged to explain himself to anyone.

"What's it like?" he asks quietly, though of course he's only musing aloud. "It's been more than eighty years, now. Do you really still believe your professor's going to step off the train one day and say 'Hey there, boy! Miss me?' Does it hurt, every time he doesn't? Do you really think your vigil's going to be rewarded in the end?"

He pauses, considers. "Or do you just not remember how to do anything but wait?"

The dog glances up at him with eyes sad and hopeful and incredibly patient, and shifts a little closer to lean against his leg. Joshua's on his feet in an instant, stepping away and wrinkling his nose. "Excuse me," he says sternly, "These clothes are worth several dozen of you, thank you, and I'm very fond of them. You shed on them, or drool, or whatever you do, _you die_."

The dog tilts its head to one side, regards him curiously, and then turns back to the empty platform with, perhaps, the closest thing to a shrug that a dog can manage. Joshua shakes his head, starts to walk away. Why he stopped at all he's not sure.

It's not really been a good day. He had lunch with Neku, and that's generally fun, but apparently Neku's started thinking about college. Joshua cautiously pointed out to him over lunch that there's a perfectly decent school in Shibuya, no reason he shouldn't go there. Neku... didn't outright dismiss the possibility, but Joshua doubts it's happening, at least without some serious misuse of his powers.

_And if Neku leaves--_

He hesitates, trying to ignore all the ways that thought could end, but eventually he turns around and walks back.

A thought, and the clothes are replaced with jeans and a t-shirt. Joshua settles himself down on the station floor next to Hachiko with a sigh, reaches out to give the dog an awkward attempt at a consoling pat.

They sit in silence, and wait for the train to come in.

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A/N: Comments always welcome. :)


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